


Magenta, Fuchsia, and Other More Important Things

by ellebb



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, a lil bit, adam being Adam(tm), doing some character fleshing out, it's there tho, nate and farrah have never done anything bad in their entire lives, set shortly post-Book One, we know this and love them for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 08:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14052798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: The Detective gets released from the Agency’s infirmary, and returns to see all the damage done to her home.  She gets upset, there may be some hinting by some nosy trouble-making agents, and Adam is,for some reason, drawn to checking in on her.





	Magenta, Fuchsia, and Other More Important Things

“Oh,” Lotus said. **  
**

They’d warned her that the aftermath of the fight in her apartment was not pretty, but that was just hearing it.  Actually seeing it was a different matter.  The Agency people had come in and done their best to neaten things up, but it mostly amounted to organizing all her broken things for her to go through and decide what to send to the dump and what was salvageable.

Pushing the apartment door in had set free the bitter and chemical smell of where agents had fogged out the DMB residue and given her walls a fresh coat of white primer.  The living room had gotten the worst of it; the thralls and the thrashing of Unit Bravo had completely smashed her DIY sectional made of junk yard pallets.  They’d already thrown it out, along with the shards of her weird 80’s chrome and glass coffee table.  Agents had neatly piled up her multitude of mismatched throw pillows; most were soaked with blood and… she didn’t really want to know what else.  Most would have to go.

“It looks better than when we left,” Farrah offered, propping her head on Lotus’s shoulder.

Lotus exhaled and pushed the door wider, going in. “I can’t complain too much.  You guys did most of the worst work.”

“ _We_  guys,” Farrah corrected. “You’re part of the club now, too.”

She smiled back at her briefly.  As Nate and Farrah filed into her small apartment, Lotus stepped over some boxes of salvaged knick-knacks.  The two of them had offered to help her figure out her apartment since she just got the all-clear from the doctors.  She had mostly accepted for the company, but now that she actually saw the state of things she was grateful for the help.  Farrah skipped over to the miraculously intact entertainment center (a yard sale find she was particularly proud of: it was a kooky 70’s tiki affair with bamboo canes and wicker).  Nate frowned down at the pillows.

“I’m not sure how many of these can be washed,” he said.

Lotus shrugged. “Use your best judgment and start a pile for the trash.”

She turned away; watching him and her pillow collection would be too painful.  The kitchen looked mostly alright except for the white splotches where the Agency had patched the walls.  And some chipped counter corners and dented cabinets, but she was getting more and more used to that sort of thing since, you know--  _Adam_.

The she rounded the kitchen corner.

“Oh no,” Lotus said.

In the little area that most people would use for a breakfast nook, she had had her big old record player unit and her albums.  The shelves were gone, likely resembling a heap of match sticks now.  Rows of boxes sat on the floor.  Some boxes held intact albums, but quite a few only had sad shards of shattered vinyl and the scraps of sleeves.  What was left of the record player sat in a large plastic tub.

Lotus sank to her knees by the boxes.

“Oh, right,” Farrah said, popping her head around the corner. “Morgan owes you an apology for that.  So I guess don’t hold your breath or anything.”

Lotus didn’t reply.  She stared at the remains of what had taken her years to collect.  It’s not like she was a crazy vinyl enthusiast; most of her albums were in poor condition, quite common, and just random finds.  She’d had at least four or five copies each of  _Rumours_ ,  _Purple Rain_ , and  _What’s Going On_  (etcetera, etcetera).  Each with their own unique scratches and skips.  Where one fell off into unlistenable garbles, the next would pick up.

But they had been  _her_ crappy old records.  Knowing the exact moment to move the needle over a scratch had been a habit, a familiar old ritual.

“Lotus?”

She waved back at Farrah. “It’s okay.  It happens.”

She pulled a box towards herself.  Behind her, she felt Farrah pause but eventually leave.

She made the mistake of going through the broken records first.  Of going through the broken ones at all.  It just brought up old memories of when she bought them and who she’d been with.  Being a silly high school student, a self-righteous college student, and the uncertain time after graduation.  The girlfriends and boyfriends.  A mist burned at her eyes.

“You okay in here?”

Nate hovered behind her.

She got to her feet, using the action to (probably unconvincingly) swipe at her face.

She cleared her throat. “Actually, uh, why don’t you guys go on?  I think I’ll take care of this myself.  Not that I don’t appreciate the help…”

He leaned around the corner, his dark brows drawn.  She steeled her feelings and smiled.

“Are you sure?” Nate said.

“Yeah,” she said, slapping imaginary dust from her jeans. “I think chucking all this junk will be therapeutic after, y’know, everything.”

Farrah popped her head around Nate’s high shoulder. “Are you kicking--”

Nate side-bumped her. “We won’t intrude.  Call us if you need help?”

“Yeah, thanks, guys.”

She waited until she heard the click of the door until she let herself get all snively and weepy, looking down at the remains of her collection.  It probably didn’t matter if they were out of the apartment or not; no doubt they could hear her with their vampire ears.  Still, her human comfort was her human comfort.  She got up and looked around.

There was so much to do.  The Agency was good enough to provide for replacements, but all the money in the world wouldn’t buy back her sentimental things.  She’d have to buy a new sofa and chairs, a new bar cart…

Lotus sighed.  Her finger ran over a particularly large patch-job on the wall of the hallway as she went to the bedroom.  Things were thankfully mostly the same here.  The dresser and the bed just as neat as the day Adam hustled her out the fire escape.  The covers were even still tucked at the corners the way Mom always did them; Lotus had almost forgotten that she’d made the bed for her that day.

She turned around.  Her bronze statuette stared up at her from her dresser table.  She picked it up.  The god’s casual slouch and upraised palms of both supplication and blessing, and his serene stylized smile had remained untouched.  Lotus pressed it to her chest.

She was being stupid.  Her fingers mushed at her wet cheeks and burning eyes.  The world wasn’t going to end just because of a few records and knick-knacks.

Lotus replaced the statuette, and slapped at either side of her face briskly.  As her old sargeant from the police academy used to say:

“ _Alright, Pollyanna, it’s motherfucking go-time_ ,” she announced to the air.

-

For lack of anything better to do, they joined Adam and Morgan at Murphy’s warehouse for the final inspection before it was closed off.  The Agency had already gone through the Frankenstein lab and the mess that had passed for the madman’s records, but Bravo themselves hadn’t had a chance yet to get a final look as the case’s primary unit.  With the Detective’s convalescence ending, they were all getting back to normal.  Well, as “normal” as it got for them.

“What’re you doing here?” Adam frowned as Nate and Farrah walked in.

Farrah wrinkled her nose against the musty dust their feet kicked up. “Nice to see you, too.”

Kneeling and picking through what looked like a forgotten trash bin, he scowled at her.  Morgan leaned against a wall, smoking.  And not particularly helping.

Nate toed some broken bricks and rubble. “Lotus said she wanted to take care of her apartment herself.”

Farrah went to squat by Morgan and gave their leader a side-eye.

“More like we got kicked out,” she said. “So she could have a good cry.  By herself.  All alone.”

Morgan made a disgusted noise. “Jeeze.  What in the hell for?  You were just throwing out crap.”

Nate gave the two of them a look, but the sound of Adam conspicuously going back to his trash bin drew his eye.  Farrah waggled her brows at him.

Nate coughed. “Well, it’s sort of your fault, Morgan.  Remember when you threw that thrall into the record player, and leapt after him?”

“And smashed his head against the shelves with the albums?” Farrah added.

The cigarette between Morgan’s lips shifted up and down. “Yeah.  So?”

“Just a hint,” Nate frowned at her. “But I think all of those meant a lot to the detective.”

Morgan shrugged. “Still don’t see what it matters to me.  It was just things.”

“Morgan, you could at least--”

“She’s right,” Adam interjected.  He stood, wiping his hands down his pants. “The detective will survive the loss.  Let’s get on with this, already.”

Nate stared at him, but couldn’t quite read beyond his friend’s stoic expression and slightly pursed lips.  Adam gestured to the other dilapidated rooms waiting for them.  Nate stared a moment longer, and then to hide a small smile he turned heel to obey.  He grabbed the pouting Farrah on his way.

“But--”

“Come on, we have our marching orders.”

Farrah groaned in protest.

-

Adam frowned up at the windows of the apartment building across the street.  What was he doing here?  He shouldn’t be here.  He should go back to the Agency already like the others.

His treacherous feet crossed the quiet lanes, and he found himself entering the building and climbing the stairwell.  He stopped on a landing.  Not too late.  He could still leave.  But then somehow he was at the familiar door again.  And somehow his hand was knocking.

He was checking on her.  On the unit’s principle.  The detective’s safety was, after all, their prime directive.

… She was taking a long time.

He knocked again.  Nothing.

Going out on her own hadn’t been against the rules or anything, but it would make Bravo’s job a lot easier to know where she was if not with them.  Well, maybe knowing her every movement at any time was a little much to expect.  He hesitated and felt the weight of the phone in his pocket.  But after the long stay in the Agency, who wouldn’t want to have a little time to themselves?

He would wait, Adam decided.  He would wait and tell her he had just happened by to check on her.

Except by the time he heard the detective push into the building, it was an hour later and his fingers worried at his pocket and his feet tapped.  A rustling and metallic clanking heralded her ascent up the stairs.  And, of course, that great and terrible scent.

Her mass of tight dark coils popped up over the stairs.

“Oh,” Lotus said, spotting him. “Hey.”

He watched as she dropped two armfuls of waxed canvas bags with an ‘oof.’  She smiled at him, digging into her purse.

“What’re you doing here?  I thought you were at the warehouse.”

He frowned at her. “Have you completely forgotten the potential dangers?  If you’re going to run around alone…”

Unlocking her door, she raised a brow. “So you  _don’t_ want to come in…?”

He made a dismissive sound. “I just dropped by to do my job.  See to your safety, if you will not do it yourself.”

“Did you wait long?”

“I  _just dropped by_.”

“So you definitely don’t want to come in.”

He shifted, the corners of his mouth dug in deep.  She sighed and put her hands on her hips.

“I’m sorry, okay?” she said, sincere but with a bit of a laugh in her eyes nonetheless. “I’ll text one of you the next time I’m going to ‘run around alone.’”

Heat ran up his neck.  Some words threatened to fall off his tongue, so to dam them up he bent to hoist all of the shopping bags.  He passed by her into the apartment with them, and the doorway was only just wide enough for two.  The distance between them sparked with heat, and he determinedly avoided her eyes on him.

The pillows, with their jewel and neon hues and their clashing patterns, were bundled in garbage bags.  The ceramic menagerie of knick-knacks and general kitsch was packed away in boxes.  Everything was pushed to the center of the rooms.  He put the bags down in the living room, beside the hill of boxes.

He glanced at her as she closed the door and tossed her purse onto the entertainment center.  Her brown cheeks did not shine with tears, and she hummed as she knelt to dig into her shopping bags.  He was tempted to suspect Nate and Farrah of baiting him with outright lies for some foolish misconception, except it had been Farrah  _and_ Nate.  Farrah alone, yes.  With Nate?  No.  Probably.

“What is all this?” Adam asked.

Lotus tugged a large tin out of a bag. “I’m painting.”

She dropped a second tin beside the first.  His brow rose.

“Those splotches are… the colors…?” he asked.

The sample dabs of dried paint on the can lids were some of the most glaring shades of fuchsia and magenta he’d ever witnessed.  He shouldn’t be surprised; before the thralls dragged them down and made tatters of them, she’d had turquoise and neon orange tapestries hanging on the walls.  Crouched, she looked up and grinned at him.

The sight made his eyes dart. “Are you doing the whole place by yourself?”

“Not if you’re offering to help,” she said.

Adam cleared his throat, and studied the field of walls to conquer.  It was a small apartment, but painting always turned into more of a task than you first think it would be.  He might as well.  It was the least he-- that  _Unit Bravo_ could do.  For her.  For a _fellow agent_.

He took off his jacket.

“Great!” she said. “It’ll go by like a flash.”

The rollers, the tape, and the plastic drop cloths were pulled out.  They tossed drop cloths over the remainder of her furniture and the floor.  Lotus disappeared for a second, so Adam took initiative with the blue painter’s tape.  She appeared again, hair tied up in a scarf.

“Oh, no, not that wall,” she told him.  She dug into a bag again and brandished a roll of what looked like wallpaper. “Look, it’s a mural.  It’s great, I couldn’t believe it when I saw it--”

She showed him the paper inset.  It was… very floral.  Very  _pointedly_ floral and very pointedly orange and pink and red.  And there would be a lot of it.

“It’s very…” he tried not to frown.  A definite attempt was made.

Producing a screwdriver, she popped open a can of the fuchsia and displayed it for him.  She wrinkled her nose, smiling. “Go on.  Say it.”

He remained silent.

“Go on.  I know you’re dying to.”

Adam sighed.  He stood and pushed his sleeves up, finally giving her a small and exasperated smile. “It’s very you.”

Lotus blinked, and her grin faded.  A single corkscrew curl escaped the scarf and brushed a round cheek.  They were on opposite sides of the room, but his fingers practically tingled with the heat of her flush, with the impulse to close their distance and reach out.  His thumb itched with the idea of tucking that errant curl up into the scarf.

She looked down.  Relief and regret flooded him, in equal measures.

She cleared her throat. “Here.  Let’s get this tape on the trim.”

They turned their attention fully to the task of transforming her apartment into resembling the interior of a pomegranate.  They gave each other terse inquiries and lapsed into silence as they worked.  When she dug a dusty bluetooth speaker from the back of the entertainment center, he fiddled with a paint roller and studied her from the corner of his eye.  Frowning, she squatted and fiddled with her phone.

Clearing his throat, Adam glued his eyes to the very demanding task of putting a fuzzy cover on a paint roller. “By the way… About your records…”

She looked up at him carefully not looking at her. “Did Nate and Farrah say something?”

“They may have… mentioned… something.”

She waited for a moment. “And…?”

“And-- that’s all.  They mentioned it,” he said, and busied himself with filling the paint trays.

She watched. “Uh.  Hey.  I forgot, but is the smell too much for you?  The paint.  You don’t have to, you know…”

He shook his head. “It’s fine.”

“Really?”

“Manageable.”

“Hmm.”

Her attention turned back to her phone.  A soft and slightly dated tune spilled from the speaker.  She reached for her own roller.

“Do you mind?  The music?” she asked.

“No.”

They worked quietly for some time, on separate walls, as she occasionally hummed along to a few bars with the changing songs from the speaker.  He thought the matter forgotten, and the reason he was drawn here comfortably swept beneath the metaphorical rug (seeing as her cheap faux-persians had been bloodied and disposed of), until she spoke again.

“Avalokitesvara told me to get over it.”

He swiveled. “What?”

She paused, rolling some paint onto her roller.  A smile tugged her face upward. “The bodhisattva.  My statue-- well, it doesn’t matter.  Just you know, things can be replaced.  I can love my possessions, but I have more valuable things in my life.”

Adam went back to rolling on the brilliant magenta. “That’s… good to hear.”

“I have the ability to do good in this world,” she continued. “I’ve got my health.  My mother.  Who I get to see regularly now.  I like my job.  I have good friends.  Friends that come check on me if I’m sad.”

His roller rolled to an abrupt stop.  She smiled at him.  And the sharp and acrid chemical smell of the paint faded away from its oppressive fog to a mere nothing.  The trill and skull-reverberating thrum of the music dissipated.

Adam latched onto a hard frown like a life buoy.

“I came to check on a member of the Agency,” he said. “Considering the circumstances--”

“Ah, yes, the circumstances.  My whole blood thing.”

“Which would be much less of a burden if your combat skills weren’t so nonexistent.”

“Wh-- Because I would need a blackbelt to run to the hardware store?  Ooh, boogeyman in the fertilizer, ooh.  I see your point.”

“Remember that one time you thought you were just running an errand to the hospital?”

Lotus made a face at this.  Her lips puckered and her nose crinkled.  Adam kept a small smile to himself.

“And remember that one time you got a black eye by  _running into an elbow_ \--”

“Alright, alright, I get the idea.”

“Unless you actually believed your enemies were quaking in their boots at the thought of your skill at paint selection.”

She turned away and went so hard with the roller that she flung fuchsia speckles up the wall. “I wasn’t even talking about you, anyway.”

Adam shifted.  Maybe he’d gone-- but the idea was ridiculous.  It was ridiculous to imagine himself feeling anything other than indifference about ‘not being the friend she was talking about, anyway.’  About the ‘friend’ part.

The topic of what had happened at the tail end of the warehouse incident-- of what he’d said-- hadn’t come up.  He was not even sure she remembered.  She probably did and he was grateful she did not mention it.

A matter best left to the past, and chalked up to… lost composure during a stressful event.

“You can make it up to me by taking me to the gun range,” Lotus announced. “Help me mend what I so lack, according to you.”

“What…”

“I don’t think you’re going to say sorry.  But it doesn’t matter, really.  I’ll just go ahead and say my part anyway.”

“You--” he sighed, exasperated.

She’d come up behind him, hands on her hips and speckles all over her shirt and arms.  She inspected his work.  A few more curls had joined the one across her cheek.

He frowned, and looked away. “You’re not ‘lacking.’  You just… need training.”

A grin slipped back around the corners of her mouth.

Adam rolled his eyes, adding, “ _Badly_.”

She agreed breezily, and prodded him into helping her with the mural.  He argued that the edges around the trim should be painted first, and she argued back that she was too impatient about seeing the mural.  And it was her apartment, anyway.  These were the sort of tasks that didn’t benefit from supernatural speed, so it wasn’t until well past dark that they finished.  They stood back to admire their work.

Well.  Lotus admired, and Adam squinted.

The mural turned out as pointedly floral and insistently brilliant as the paper inset promised.  More so, even.  Roiling red and orange petals, from floor to ceiling.  And paired with magenta and fuchsia walls all around.  But she seemed pleased, so that’s what mattered.

He pulled his jacket back on. “Report to the Agency at seven.”

She started. “In the morning?  For what?”

“Training.  Remember?”

“Oh,” she said. “So soon.  Right.  I mean, that’s great.  While the iron’s hot and all.  I guess.”

He allowed himself a small smile, but he coughed as she got the door for him.  The air changed as they shuffled past each other in the confines of the room with boxes on one side and wet walls on the other, and a strangeness sitting directly between them.  He nodded as he marched out into the hall, and he stopped when she called his name.

“Adam.”

She leaned against the door, looking at him. “Thanks for all the help.  It was fun.”

His tongue became a useless lump of tar.  He swallowed and scowled.

“You’re welcome.  Seven  _sharp_.”

She gave him a jaunty salute. “Aye, aye, capitán.”

Adam climbed down the stairs and exited into the not-quite-yet-warm spring night air, certain that magenta and fuchsia would be burned to his retinas and he’d recall the colors each time he closed his eyes.


End file.
